


What Goes Missing

by tree



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M, Pregnant Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-16
Updated: 2008-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:03:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree/pseuds/tree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She learned to love what goes missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Goes Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of round two, the leftovers, at [Get House Laid](http://community.livejournal.com/get_house_laid) for prompt 164: House/Cuddy — pregnancy.
> 
> A/N: Italicised portions are from the poem “August” by Esta Spalding. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of just writing smut. Feh. This was sort of an experiment. It may have, um, failed horribly. Thanks to Wendy, who was gracious enough to give me her thoughts on parts I-III. None of this is her fault.

_                                   she rowed  
against the escaping tide  
fighting to stay afloat._

To find the sea she had to turn her back to it,  
stroke.

I

The conversation went something like this:

"You said I should find someone I trust. I trust you."

"I also said it should be someone you like."

"I like you."

II

It was a secret they held even from themselves. He masturbated in a small white room and saved his semen in a cup for her. She lay on an examination table with her feet in stirrups so that their combined genetic material could be inserted via catheter into her uterus.

They did not speak of these things.

But after the third attempt, when her blood work came back positive for hCG, Cuddy walked into House's office and laid a cherry lollipop on his desk with a note that read, simply, _thank you_.

III

The weekend forecast called for heavy rains and high winds all along the eastern seaboard. Tropical cyclone, said the meteorologist, hurricane season.

In the kitchen, she mixed batter for pancakes. Her bare feet curled and stretched pleasantly against the cool floor as she measured, sifted, stirred. She was sixteen weeks pregnant and brimful of a delicious, private joy. Her body felt lush and promissory as the dark soil of a river delta.

That he would knock on her door now seemed to make an odd sort of sense.

*

She licked the last drops of syrup from the tines of her fork and set it down. "House, why are you here?"

He swirled a finger through the sticky residue on his plate. "No case. Thought I'd come by and watch you gestate for a while."

Rain pattered at the window and the room smelled of sugar. She rose and ran the water until it burned her fingers. She rinsed the plates and mixing bowl; let the sink fill with a riot of soapy bubbles. "Are you having second thoughts?" she asked, watching water fall inside and out.

Behind her, a chair scraped and footsteps shuffled. "I don't know," he answered from somewhere near her left ear. "We've never talked about this."

"I didn't think you wanted to." She bent her head into the steam.

"I didn't," he said. "I didn't then."

"And now?"

He stood behind her, the length of him pressed lightly against her back, and rested his arms against the counter on either side of her waist. A slight scrape of teeth against her skin made her shiver and drop the spoon she was washing.

"House, what are you doing?" She held very still.

"I'm biting your neck," he told her in a tone that said the answer should have been obvious. She could feel the movement of his lips against her as he formed the words. Her awareness narrowed to the small patch of her body where his breath sparked tiny paroxysms on her afferent nerves.

So gently, again and again, his teeth caught at her skin.

"Don't," she murmured, even though her eyes had closed and her hands were limp in the dishwater.

"You liked it last time." He was licking her, slow draws of his tongue along the ridge of her cervical vertebrae. "I'm so glad you're wearing your hair up today."

It's the heat, she told herself, the heavy weight of the air that was making it so difficult to lift her arms, to push him away. "House, this isn't talking."

His right hand dipped up from her waist, over her ribs, to cup her breast. "Talk later," he muttered.

She moaned, she couldn't help it, and arched into his hand as sensation rippled down to land bright and hot between her legs. Over her t-shirt and bra he circled his palm against her nipple until the pleasure of it teetered at the edge of pain. She gripped the edge of the sink and heard herself panting.

"Sensitive, aren't you?" he whispered, switching to the other breast. His mouth continued to nip and suck at her neck, her shoulders, under her jaw. His rough stubble pinpricked and stung in counterpoint to the soft swipes of his tongue.

The world had narrowed to sensation; the ache in her belly became a burn. He tugged at the waist of her shorts until the seam rode up between her thighs and she whimpered. He moved his left hand down to cup her over the shorts, the pressure so good. She could only rock against him and hold herself up with shaking arms.

Everything in and around her was hot as a furnace. His weight against her back, the water in the sink, the thick pleasure coursing through her, the air in her lungs. He was biting her harder now, pinching her nipples between his fingers, squeezing her whole breast with his hand.

Climax gnawed at her, its roots and tendrils unfurling under the beautiful friction. Some part of her was dimly aware that she was humping House’s hand as he groped her in the kitchen. But he was solid behind her, made of heat and clever fingers, and she was voracious in her desire. Outside, the sky was an upturned ocean, falling, a cup spilling over, too full to contain. And inside, the terrible, wonderful bloom and burst of orgasm rushed through her til she was gasping, sobbing her release, dissolving in his hands.

IV

Light from her bedside lamp silvered the edges of his downcast eyelashes, flashed against his teeth bared in an agonised rictus. In her mouth, his cock was smooth and hot on her tongue, the skin of his testicles delicate and sweet. When he came she had to close her eyes against the sheer physicality of it, the yearning tenderness it made her feel.

His eyes opened as she slipped him out of her mouth. The irises were very blue. She rose to lie beside him and asked, "How's your leg?"

"Which one?" He leaned up on one elbow and made a show of looking down at his body.

She shook her head, amused despite herself.

"Oh you mean _that_ leg. If you were a real doctor you'd know that endorphins are peptides that activate the body's opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect."

"Thank you for that fascinating biochemistry lesson." She pushed at his shoulder until he flopped back against the bed. "You look tired, House. Go to sleep."

He snorted and shifted away, finally settling on his right side, facing her. For a time she listened to his steady breathing and watched his eyes twitch under their papery lids like insect wings. In repose, his mouth was slack and vulnerable, as honest and eloquent in its silence as any word he had ever said. She was filled with something more profound than love; she was filled with hope. With one hand on her belly and one against his hip, she allowed herself to sink into sleep.

Through the wet, grey afternoon they lay together, a palimpsest, reinscribing.

V

Thunder, and a hand in her hair. "What?" she murmured, half awake.

He was propped against the headboard, untangling the pins in her curls. "It's time to start gathering the animals two by two."

"That bad already?"

"Your backyard is full of puddles."

She yawned and pushed her face against his side. "I guess you won't be going home."

"Guess not."

Long fingers massaged her scalp until she hummed in approval and rubbed her cheek against him like a cat.

"I never wanted to be a father," he said softly.

She opened her eyes to the landscape of his chest gilded by lamplight. In sleep, her hand had held to the curvature of her abdomen, fingers spread wide over the life growing there. "I know," she responded in the same low tone. "That's why I was so surprised when you--" she lifted her head to look at him. "Not that I'm not grateful."

"I didn't do it for your gratitude, Lisa."

He so rarely used her first name that it made her smile, its unfamiliarity almost like an endearment. "Then why?" She was genuinely curious.

"At first, because you asked." His eyes shifted to the window, as if the answer were out there, being washed away by the rain. "I… care about you. I didn't want you to do something you'd later regret. The kid should at least know the name of its father. _You_ should know the name of its father."

"And then?"

"And then..." he trailed off, seeming almost reluctant. Finally, he met her eyes. "You were so damn happy. And I was a part of that, of making you happy instead of miserable." He cupped her jaw. "Some days I hate it that you know me so well, that you know when to push and when to leave it – leave me – alone. You've been happy, even when you were puking your guts out, not asking for anything, not expecting anything. And I realised I wanted you to ask for things, to expect things. From me."

It was, she thought, the most backward, inept, lovely declaration of feeling she'd ever heard. Smiling, light with joy, she kissed him. It began sweetly, an expression of all she held inside. Then his mouth opened and she tasted the soft, inner shell of his lip. A shock of desire slithered through her.

Breaking the kiss, she moved so she was straddling his lap, careful, always careful, of his thigh. Under her palm, his abdominal muscles clenched when she licked his flat nipple. She stroked his hardening cock and watched his pupils dilate, felt his grip on her hips.

"Tell me if I hurt you," she whispered.

"No, 's good.”

Her hips began to undulate in time to the movement of her hand on him. She bit her lip as her head fell back and her eyes closed. It felt… it felt like she was stroking herself somehow. Stroking her own cock, she thought, and moaned.

"Christ you're sexy," he muttered.

His mouth closed over her breast, suckling strongly, and her head shot up to find him staring at her. Pupils huge, stubbled cheeks hollowed.

"I love you," she told him hoarsely. "I can't help it, I do."

He kissed her then, his hands on her face as though he'd swallow her whole. Her hand kept up its rhythm as she lowered herself to him. She rubbed the head of his penis against her swollen clitoris, through her labia, against her entrance. His hips jerked upwards, seeking blindly, and he shuddered as she sank down.

The sensation was extravagant. She was so wet, so swollen, so close. He pushed against her once, twice, his pelvis so perfectly aligned, and she was gone.

"Oh," she crooned, as the pleasure pulsed and ricocheted through her. "Oh."

He grunted as he came inside her, fingers clutched and bruising on her hips. She slumped against him, grinning, and the room was filled with the sounds of their gasping breaths and the steady thrum of rain.

VI

Lisa Cuddy wakes to her alarm on a Tuesday morning in August. She is alone in the wide expanse of her bed. The sky outside the window is flat and pale in the first light of early dawn, completely cloudless. A light wind stirs the dusty, dry leaves of the taller trees, while closer to earth the air is still.

Under the sheet, she slides her hand down the declivity of her ribs to the taut plane of her belly. It is as empty as her bed, her heart.

She does not cry.

_                                                            The sea is a wound  
                                                            &amp; in loving it  
                                                            she learned to love what goes missing._

I've often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask. – Fox Mulder.


End file.
